Prevalence of overweight and obesity among health professionals with shift work schedules: A scoping review

ABSTRACT

Epidemiological evidence show that shift work can contribute to increased body weight. This study aims to map the prevalence of obesity and overweight among health professionals who work in shifts and analyse the factors that contribute to weight gain. A scoping review was conducted, following the proposal of the Joanna Briggs Institute. The Population, Concept, and Context strategy was used to formulate the guiding question. The proposed question was: “What is the prevalence of overweight and obesity among health professionals with shift work schedules?” After excluding duplicate articles, analysing titles and abstracts, and excluding articles that did not answer the guiding question, 20 articles remained and were included in this review. The studies have shown that the main factors that could influence weight gain among health professionals that are shift workers, are hormonal dysregulation, eating unhealthy meals, and low rates of physical activities practice. This scoping review showed that shift work can be an important risk factor for the development of overweight and obesity among these professionals. This implies the need of developing and implementing health policies aimed at reducing the excessive exposure of these workers to shift schedules and encouraging healthier and long-lasting changes in their lifestyles, both at workplace and outside of it.

KEYWORDS:

• Shift work
• obesity
• overweight
• healthcare professional
• body mass index

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.